onotob

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to the next installment of my Mystical Music Release. It’s been almost six months since volume 003 graced your inboxes with its melodic wonderfulness, and for that I apologize. If I were me, I would love getting beautiful new music in my email at regular intervals, and I would be sorely upset if I were to suddenly take a six-month break from sending me music.

But trust me, my friends, these four albums are worth the wait.

As I’m sure you all already know from your religious readings of my web site, I have decided, from this release on, to purchase all of the albums I send to you in these messages. In the past, I have given out both purchased and downloaded music, but I decided that if I’m going to be handing out music to my friends, I should make sure at least one sale happens from the process. I will also be including Buy Me links on the web site cross-posting of this email. I will try to find outlets which are as few steps from the artist as possible (personal sites, label sites, etc.) so that as many of your hard-earned dollars as possible reach those responsible for your newfound happiness. I won’t be signing up for any reimbursement programs, so you can be assured that this change is for only the most altruistic reasons. Well, I want these artists to continue to produce their aural delights, so I guess it’s still selfishly inspired.

All that aside, I have collected here four albums which I am very excited about. I find myself having to exert a certain amount of self-control in order not to just explode with superlatives about these artists. Jon should feel fortunate that I have not strapped him into some kind of restraining device and forced him to listen to Sleater-Kinney’s “The Woods” until I was sure he loved it as much as I know he should.

And with that frightening picture in mind, I give you the music:

Alarm Will Sound – Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound Performs Aphex Twin
[Buy: CD]

Amazon.com is flooded with “String Quartet Tributes” to every artist imaginable. A search for “string tribute” brings back 174 of these CDs, most of them merely attempts to quickly capitalize on the success of whichever band they’re covering. (Can you say String Quartet Tribute to KISS?) But, of course, I wouldn’t be including this CD in the release if it fell into that category, now would I? Alarm Will Sound is a group of 20 musicians working as Artists-in-Residence at Dickinson College. With a rotating cast of arrangers, the group set out to tackle the difficult task of moving a selection of the Aphex Twin catalog into the analog world. Most of the selections come from the ambivalently-received drukqs, which seems surprising at first, given Richard James’ extensive catalog. All doubt fails in the first few seconds of the opening track. These enterprising music nerds have been quite successful in their translations. I made an iTunes playlist which staggered the original Aphex tracks with the chamber music reconstructions and the results are positively sublime. Where Richard James used squelchy little synth patches to express some hidden melody, Alarm brings a cello and suddenly the beauty of the piece is immediately apparent. It’s almost too easy, but I don’t feel that we should fault anyone for making genius accessible. Highlights: “Cock/Ver 10”, “Fingerbib”, “Mt. Saint Michel”

Jamie Lidell – Multiply
[Buy: CD MP3]

Jamie Lidell is a little-known performance artist/musician who’s previous work consisted of beatboxing, dressing in “media suits” (giant pieces of tape with videotape stuck to them) and doing big multimedia shows, all of which made him a perfect fit for our favorite proprietors of the eclectic across the pond, Warp Records. That this album comes from the same outlet as Autechre and Prefuse 73 is one of the reasons that his new album, Multiply, so easily took me off guard. (The other reason is that it is just so unbelievably, soul-shockingly good.) Mr. Lidell is, it seems, in possession of one of the most expressive voices that has ever existed, and there couldn’t be a better venue for it than the excellent soul and R&B tracks that make up this album. Lidell has managed to strike a perfect balance between the avant-garde musicianship of his Warp peers and the deep-down body rocking of classic soul. Listening at work, I have to suppress the urge to stand up, spin in a circle and clap my hands. But I’ve said too much. Every word I write only makes my description less accurate. Just play it loud. Highlights: Tracks 1-6.

One Self – Children of Possibility
[Buy: CD MP3]

Made up of producer DJ Vadim and MCs Yarah Bravo and Blu Rum 13, One Self is one of those musical amalgamations that becomes greater than the sum of its parts: a crazy, beautiful, kick-ass Frankenstein of Hip-Hop minimalism. Vadim—Russian born, London raised—has been a Ninja Tune regular for years now, but seems to have finally come into his own with this album. Previous releases brought new meaning to the concept of “chill” as an art form, with lazy, muted beats lumbering on and on. Here he is spry, moving along the time line with confidence and grace. And the space! For the most part, the album’s production is sparse and open, allowing both very talented MCs ample opportunity to croon where other rappers are yelling and spitting. The sounds here seem fresh and ancient simultaneously, with the serious and introspective tromp of “Fear the Labor” giving way to the summer city stroll groove of “Bluebird”, and 1 minute 19 seconds into “Trying to Speak” marks the beginning of one of the coolest verses in recent musical memory. Highlights: “Trying to Speak”, “Bluebird”, “Hollow Human Beings”

Sleater-Kinney – The Woods
[Buy: CD]

Most of the press surrounding Sleater-Kinney’s latest album has centered first on how divergent it is from their previous work, and then segued into how completely awesome it is. You can read all about their personal epiphany and consequent life rearrangement in pretty much any music rag. Pitchfork Media’s review even starts basically the same way I just did (we’re so meta-). But let’s move on to the awesome part. I’m a latecomer to the whole rock thing, and as such I think I tend to fall face first into hopeless adoration as soon as a record hits all those heart strings that Rock and Roll is so very good at hitting. When I listened to “The Fox”, the first track of the album, I thought to myself, “My, this is loud,” but I went with it. Then Carrie Brownstein’s voice came shining confidently through this sea of distorted guitar and I thought, “That’s interesting.” By the end of “What’s Mine is Yours” I was unabashedly in love. I got stuck on that song and listened to it constantly for a long time before I even gave the last two thirds of the album a chance, and I would have included the album in the release on its merits alone. But, thankfully, the rest of the crowd can stand on their own, if not with the same immediacy. The women of Sleater-Kinney are able to shift styles and moods with ease, bringing their punk roots in to play with their nostalgic, power rock experimentations. The back-and-forth between Corin Tucker’s sneering, confrontational vocal style and Brownstein’s siren song is particularly compelling, giving the album a real sense of dynamism and lending their songs a sort of menacing beauty. Highlights: “What’s Mine is Yours”, “Entertain”, “Rollercoaster”.

Posted at 6:30 pm.